Court dismisses Belize rape actions

Two teenage girls who claim to have been raped while on a school trip to
Belize have lost in their bid to claim damages for the attack, after a judge
ruled the teachers were not to blame.

Belize in Central America

By Martin Evans and Nick Allen

7:30AM GMT 14 Mar 2012

The pair, who were aged 15 and 16 at the time, had been on a character-building expedition in the Central American country, when they were allegedly assaulted in their jungle cabin late at night by a local man who was connected with the resort.

The girls, who are now in their 20s, and cannot be identified, were claiming £100,000 each in compensation from their school, in the Medway are of Kent and the organisers of the adventure trip, after claiming their teacher and two security guards had not done enough to prevent the attack.

But in his ruling Mr Justice Mackay said the “highly responsible and experienced adults” could not be blamed for what happened.

The court heard how the teenagers had been in a party of 12 staying at the remote camp in 2005 when their alleged attacker, who was known to them, entered their cabin late at night.

The judge said while he had not been positively invited into the cabana, the girls did not actively protest.

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“They all knew that he had no business to be in their cabana at all, let alone at midnight, and that they had no business drinking rum as some them were,” Mr Justice Mackay said.

After what started as a "harmless" game of spin-the-bottle in the hushed cabin, the man suddenly turned vicious, raping three of the teenagers, who were too "frozen in fear" to cry out, it was claimed.

He was later charged in relation to the offences in Belize but the case were dropped when the victims felt unable to return to the country in order to give evidence at his trial.

When the Daily Telegraph tracked him down in Belize they found him back in his old job leading tourists on excursions.

After initially fleeing to Guatemala in the wake of the incident in 2005, the guide returned within a matter of months and resumed his old life looking after European tourists.

Asked about the case he said: “I was actually disappointed it didn’t go to a jury. I was fully 100 per cent ready to face any jury, and those girls, and say 'this is my story, this is your story, let a jury decide.’”

In their action for damages, lawyers for the girls claimed their alleged attacker’s behaviour in the days leading up to the attack should have alerted the staff that he was grooming them.

But exonerating the school, along with the trip's organisers - Adventure Life Signs Ltd - the judge said the whole ethos of the expedition had been “not to crowd the girls with adult supervision."

He said the alleged attacker would have taken care not to alert the girls' teacher and the two ex-military minders who were employed to protect the party.

The judge also rejected the complaint that there was a foreseeable risk of assault, insisting no amount of checking would have alerted the adults to the threat he allegedly posed.

He had no criminal record and had worked openly as a tour guide without previous complaint.

Mr Justice Mackay said: "The party was continuously supervised by three highly responsible and experienced adults.

"Short of posting a guard on the door of each cabana, or instituting some system of watch-keeping, there would have been no way of defeating this man's assault on these girls, which he and up to a point they were at pains to keep from the leaders.

"It would not fair, just and reasonable to define the scope of their duties so as to require them to make taken those or any other precautions that night.

"I find that the checks made were reasonable and proportionate and that the leaders of this expedition were not given any reasons to foresee this terrible event.

"The defendants did not breach their respective duties of care to these girls who were the victims of an unscrupulous, determined and skilful attacker.

"I regret I must therefore dismiss these claims", the judge concluded.